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LOS ANGELES,
Nov. 30, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Leading shopping site PriceGrabber.com® today revealed the latest online shopping behavior and trends over the busiest shopping period of the year. The findings indicated that Black Friday has turned into "Black Week," with sales starting earlier and deals extending later. PriceGrabber experienced a 14 percent year-over-year growth in traffic this year from
Thanksgiving until Cyber Monday, signifying that more consumers are using the internet for research, price comparison and purchasing gifts. As expected, Cyber Monday was PriceGrabber's biggest day last weekend with 20 percent more traffic than Black Friday. Consumer shopping behavior is based on PriceGrabber data and website analytics from
Nov. 22 to Nov. 26, 2012.

"This year, Black Friday leaked into
Thanksgiving and extended into the weekend, while Cyber Monday deals were stretched to Tuesday, as we saw strong online activity starting on
Thanksgiving Day and continuing throughout the week," said
Steve Krenzer, CEO of PriceGrabber.com. "We expect this 'Black Week' trend to continue next year, as retailers try to get in front of consumers earlier, and keep them engaged by offering compelling deals throughout the week – which is great news for shoppers. As a result of this new trend, shoppers this season had more time to take advantage of discounts, resulting in a consistent year-over-year growth in visits and page views."

Mobile device traffic increases Shoppers are taking advantage of having the internet in their back pocket. Traffic from smartphones and tablets have increased significantly compared to 2011, with 27 percent of total traffic originating through a mobile device over the
Thanksgiving weekend, an increase of over 116 percent compared to the same period in 2011. It is worth noting that on Black Friday, PriceGrabber saw significantly more mobile traffic than on Cyber Monday. Increased mobile volume was an indication of some show-rooming and price matching but consumer intent stayed strong as sales completion rate was within the normal range for mobile devices.

Top category trends Tablets and eReaders were among the highest growth channels this holiday weekend, with an 81 percent year-over-year traffic increase, and a modest 3 percent decline in average order price driven by the introduction of lower cost tablets such as the iPad Mini®. Smartphones were also among the highest growth categories with 60 percent year-over-year increase in volume and a 16 percent drop in average price compared to last year. Other popular categories included headphones with a 51 percent year-over-year growth in volume and an average price of
$162.

The TV category was the top searched page over the weekend and PriceGrabber saw huge discounts with the average price declining by 10 percent year-over-year. However, volume stayed relatively flat compared to last year, showing that the discounts did not result in increased demand. The price of digital cameras increased by 14 percent this year to an average of
$612. We believe this increase is due to the introduction of higher end SLR cameras. However, overall traffic declined by 6 percent, indicating that improved smartphone cameras are taking share from the expensive SLRs. MP3 Players and GPS devices experienced the sharpest decline in traffic with almost 40 percent fewer visits this holiday weekend compared to last year.

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